Thursday, 25 April 2013

'In the conduct of their parliamentary duties,
Members of the House shall base their actions on consideration
of the public interest, and shall resolve any conflict between
their personal interest and the public interest at once, and in
favour of the public interest.' - the Lord's Code of Conduct

The Lords
have spoken. The coalition with a little help from Labour Peer, Lord Warner
chose to vote in favour of the government to keep section 75 regulations of the
Health and Social Care Act in place. In doing so, they imposed increased legal
pressures on the new commissioners to put out services to tender, which will
fragment the NHS into the hands of private companies.

Tuesday, 23 April 2013

In early 2012 the Lords voted in favour of the Health and Social Care
bill, the final step in turning it into an Act. As the Lords sat in the house
to debate and vote on the bill, research conducted by Social Investigations revealed the Lords were riddled with private
healthcare interests across all parties. Despite these recent or present
financial links to private companies involved in healthcare, they were allowed
to debate and vote.

Now, for the
second time of asking the Lords are about to pass or reject a key piece of
legislation that will affect the NHS to such an extent its very existence is in
the balance. Will they or will they not choose to vote for or against section 75
Regulations of the Health and Social Care Act. If it is the former, then if passed will sound the
death knell to the NHS.

The message proffered by David Cameron when he spoke at the World Economic
Forum in Davos was tax avoidance would become a priority of the UK’s
presidency for this year. In reality, the government acts in the opposite
manner, rewards those companies who channel money to tax havens with further
contracts paid for by the taxpayer.

The calls for the government to bring about an end to tax havens has continued
to grow ever louder as the general public observe the stripping of the welfare
state, whilst billions of pounds exits the county into offshore accounts. Many
of these companies are in receipt of taxpayer’s money, which are handed
contracts by cash-strapped councils who continue to work with the organisations
despite their dubious tax practices.

George Osborne has maintained his stance
to weaken worker protections in exchange for shares. In doing so he exposes
himself as utterly undemocratic, and highlights the need for the unions to regain some strength. The latest chapter of the undemocratic
tale that threatens to shred hard-earned worker protections is about to reach a
conclusion. The Lords have just voted for a second time to reject plans to swap
protections for shares, a policy rejected by business as unworkable and
unwanted.The process began when David Cameron asked
Adrian Beecroft, a venture capitalist;
a funder to the Tory party and investor in pay-day lender Wonga, to write a
report on ways to grow the economy. The report focused largely on how difficult
it is to dismiss someone, and that the process 'makes it too easy for employees
to claim they have been unfairly treated'.

Wednesday, 10 April 2013

A private outsourcing company who are in
receipt of one of the highest government spends have channeled over
half a billion pounds into an offshore tax haven.

The Pears family’s property empire began back in 1950 when the grandfather ran
the humble business of three greengrocer stores in North London. Today however,
they control Trillium Holdings which owns about a third of the Department of
Work and Pensions (DWP) estate, including job centres, the pension service and
child maintenance offices.

Trillium and its subsidiary companies - are responsible for a £3.2bn 20-year deal to manage and provide property services for the DWP offices.

This is where it gets complicated. The
parent company of Trillium Holdings is owned by London Wall Outsourcing, which
in turn is owned by London Wall Outsourcing Holdings Limited. This company is
incorporated in the British Virgin Islands. The ultimate controlling entity is
the B Pears family trust in Bermuda.

Since 2008, London Wall Outsourcing accounts reveal that the vast sum of £666.7m has been sent in dividends to its Virgin Island based parent.

The British Virgin Islands appeared in the
news recently in dramatic fashion, after a massive leak of over 2 million
emails and documents revealed a host of political leaders and wealthy individuals whose fortunes
are stored in the tax haven.

The Pears family control a property empire valued at £6bn through a labyrinth of
companies. Until her death in 1999, the matriarch Clarice Pears was one of the
country’s richest women, with a fortune that surpassed that of the Queen. The
Pears brother, Mark, Trevor and David, have an estimated wealth of £1.7bn,
which ranks them at 38 on the Sunday Times Rich List.

One of the Pears brothers, Trevor,
part-funded David Cameron’s leadership campaign in 2005 with two £10,000 payments.
The Prime Minister has said tax havens and avoidance will be key part of the G8
summit in June this year, yet here we have his leadership being part-funded by
a director of a company who are involved in tax havens.

In a rare interview given to the Telegraph, director Mark Pears said
“We have got nothing to hide, but we are a private company”.

The business empire is run by the William Pears Group, which has been built
over the last sixty years and encompasses residential property, offices and fund management. The latest accounts
reveal the family company quadrupled their profit over the last year. One of
the family’s property coups has been the purchase of a vast chunk of the DWP
estate.

In 1998 under Blair, the then Department of Social Security transferred the management and ownership of its estate to Trillium, which had been set up by two entrepreneurs and was later bought by the property company Land Securities. The government obtained £250m for its estate and agreed a £2bn contract for serviced accommodation until 2018.

In December 2003, the Land Securities contract - known as the PRIME agreement extended to cover the Employment Service estate. The company bought the offices for £140m and agreed a £1.2bn deal to provide serviced offices. A NAO inquiry
concluded that the deal was good value for the taxpayer and justified.

Six years later, Land Securities sold Trillium to the William Pears Group for £750m, which included
the DWP estate and the government contracts. The changeover of more than 300 government offices to a company
who’s ultimate ownership lies in an offshore company was not undertaken.

The DWP is paying about £464m a year for services to Trillium, but the company has also seen a steep increase in the value of the offices it now owns. Trillium, who are advised by Conservative Peer Lord Griffths of Fforestfach, values its DWP estate at more than £1bn.

The group’s use of tax
havens will be even more frustrating for the taxpayer given the fact that the company’s
revenue is hugely bolstered by British public spending; a situation that looks
set to significantly increase. In 2012, the government made anannouncementthat a new organisationto manage Defence
property was to be formed, called the Defence Infrastructure Organisation. The
new programmewill see
contracts of MOD facilities across England and Walesdrawnup, worth up to £4.35bn andTelereal Trillium, who are a member of free market think tank Reform, have
been short-listed as part of one of three consortia approved for making bids for the MOD estate
contracts.

SeeTelereal Trillium Holdings Accounts (scroll to bottom to see link to London Wall)SeeLondon Wall Outsourcing Accounts (scroll to bottom to see link to BVI and Bermuda)

Friday, 5 April 2013

The Chair of the committee
that advises on business appointments to departing senior civil servants is a
director of a company that has won a contract related to the Health and Social
Care Act in which he voted in favour.

Lord Lang of
Monkton is the chair of the Advisory Committee on Business Appointments
(ACOBA). Set up in 1975, the remit of the committee is given by the Chairman
Lord Lang on the website

‘It is
long-standing government policy that it is in the public interest that those
with experience in government should be able to move into business or other
areas of public life and it is equally important that in the taking up of an
appointment, there is no cause for suspicion of impropriety.’

Lord Lang of
Monkton is also the director of Marsh & McLennan, a risk and strategy
management company that amongst other services helps ‘hospitals, insurers, pharmaceutical companies and
industry associations understand the implications of changing policy
environments".

Despite this
interest, Lord Lang along with 142 other peers with recent or present financial
links to companies involved in private healthcare, was able to vote on the
Health and Social Care bill helping it become an Act. The Conservative peer did
indeed vote in all key divisions loyal to his
party.

In February 2011
Marsh was appointed by the Department of Health
to conduct an ‘industry review’ of the NHS Litigation Authority. The objective
of the review was to ‘identify opportunities to introduce greater commercial
management and practice to services.

Early days

ACOBA was
initially created to provide advice on applications from the most senior Crown
servants who wish to take up outside appointments after they leave Crown
service. The work of the committee then expanded from 1995 to provide advice to
Ministers on their employment for two years after leaving office.

The organisation’s
inability to prevent the conflicts of interests that riddle both parliamentary
houses led the transparency campaigners Spinwatch to call for ACOBA’s
abolition.

McKinsey

In written evidence submitted to the
Public Administration Committee on a report on business appointment rules, they
pointed out the danger private interests being in a position to gain ‘a
competitive advantage by virtue of the inside knowledge, contacts and networks
developed while in (temporary) public service.’

Further evidence
focused on McKinsey, the management consultancy company that encouraged the £20
billion cuts the NHS is now forced to apply and who made several suggestions to end the free at
the point of need in Northern Ireland.

Spinwatch pointed
out how Tom Kibasi who ‘started at McKinsey in 2004, left two years later to
become Senior Policy Advisor to chief executive of the NHS David Nicholson, and
moved back to McKinsey in 2008, where he’s been busy helping the DH reform the
system.’ Further revolving door behaviour came in the form of David Cox, who
‘worked in the NHS, jumped ship to McKinsey, then moved to the Conservative
Party’s “Implementation team” for nine months, before settling at NHS London as
“Strategy Manager” responsible for “cutting-edge system-wide design and
planning of London’s healthcare system strategy.”’

Ex-NHS hospital
head Mark Goldman is now an adviser for the ‘McKinsey Hospital Institute,
(which contracts its services to NHS hospitals); ex-McKinsey consultant Nick
Moberly who is now CEO of Royal Surrey County Hospital; Dr Doug Russell,
ex-medical director of Tower Hamlets and now senior advisor to McKinsey.’

Such links are but
the tip of the iceberg, which Spinwatch rightfully concluded continue despite
the existence of ACOBA, which led them to conclude ‘We believe that ACOBA is an
ineffective body that should be abolished and replaced with a statutory
regulator.’

All civil servants
who go through the site are told either it is okay to take up this job without
conditions or if conditions apply then a standard reply is given such as - so
long as it is on
the understanding that the person ‘would not draw on any privileged information
from his time in Government.’

When Jim Easton left his position as ‘Director
of Improvement and Efficiency’, at the Department of Health to become Managing
director of Care UK, ACOBA stated that there must be ‘a
waiting period of three months from his last day of service; that for 12 months,
he should not become involved in advising on bids or contracts for Department
of Health business; andthat, for two years from the
same date, he should not become personally involved in lobbying UK Government
on behalf of his new employer.‘

Do you trust that
this won’t happen in some form? Do we honestly believe that when a person moves to a corporation they do not pass on information to their corporate employer
on government thinking!

The line between
public servants and corporate employees is practically non-existent which
Spinwatch suggests would be much better served with a statutory regulator
because ACOBA lacks ‘teeth’. ACOBA has no enforcement powers, so even if a person was to step out of line, nothing would be done, which is why Paul Flynn, Labour’s
tireless campaigner on lobbying described it as a ‘Committee of Futility.’

In the meantime,
they can start improving things by removing a chairman who voted on a health
bill despite a financial link to a company who earned a contract from the NHS
on the changes before it became an Act. A Lord who offered
his services to a fake lobbying company in a 2010 Channel 4 sting.

The committee is utterly flawed,
the work they do has made no difference to combat the problems of the
revolving door of civil servants working in the private sector only to
return on the corporations behalf. I add my voice to those of Spinwatch and Paul Flynn calling for its
abolition. Also the resignation of Lord Lang from both ACOBA and the Lords.